Igor Clark

I like tea. Tea is well good. I don’t like caffeine though; caffeine makes me jittery, so I don’t drink things with it in them. Like, you know, normal tea. Builder’s tea. Mmm. Which is a shame, because I like drinking it. (Well, you know, I like the drinking bit, at the actual time of drinkery, because of the taste and the refreshment bit; not after the fact, because that’s exactly the point at which I do the being-made-jittery thing.) Anyway, I digress. Unlike I usually do. Usually I stay right on target, cutting incisively through to the core of the matter. Let’s face it, digressions are hardly the sort of thing you’ve come to expect from me. Anyway, about 2 months ago I went to an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute, you know, the one on Euston Road, yeah, opposite the station, well, kind of, between Euston and Euston Square, but on the other side, so I guess kind of not between them but triangulated with them, and, prior to going, I arranged to meet some friends there so that we could allow light to bounce off the exhibits through our eyes and into our brains at the same time. I arrived a bit earlier than the appointed hour, and rather than just sit there, or even stand there, testily tapping my feet in the manner of one who’d drunk too much caffeinated tea, I went to the very nice café and bought a pot of decaffeinated English Breakfast and a Bakewell slice. The crockery was rather elegant; a triangular (bit of a triangular theme going on here) plate, triangular saucer and teacup and even, if I remember correctly, a matching triangular teapot, all with satisfyingly rounded corners, reminiscent of that ’50s style of crockery whose name I obviously can’t remember, but mixed with a bit of Alessi-style pastelism to make everything feel excitingly Noughties and simple - thus functional in appearance - but stylish. Shit yeah. Anyway, the tea, this substance chemically deprived of its primary purpose - its ergon, as those Greeks might have had it - this apparently functionally defunct jitter-inducer, fulfilled an entirely different function, perfectly: it tasted brilliant, and made me go »aaaaaahhhhh«. The bakewell was pretty damn fine, too.